Biffo was a great lieutenant, but where did all the promise go?

Brian Cowen is straight-talking and sociable, but he lost his touch after becoming taoiseach and his wit and appetite for battle could not save him

T
he first time the party faithful took notice of Brian Cowen was on a bus heading for Boland’s Mill in Dublin. Members of Fianna Fail were gathering to bid farewell to Eamon de Valera at his Easter Rising stronghold, after the party founder’s retirement as president of Ireland in 1973. On the bus from Offaly, the precocious 13-year-old boarder at Cistercian College Roscrea entertained fellow passengers with an assortment of rousing Irish ballads.

Eleven years later and qualified as a solicitor, he became the country’s youngest TD, following a by-election created by the sudden death at 51 of Ber Cowen, his father and a former junior minister for agriculture. Christy, the new TD’s cattle-dealer grandfather, had also been a Fianna Fail councillor.

Twenty-three years after his arrival in the Dail, Brian Cowen was anointed Dev’s sixth successor as leader of Fianna Fail when Bertie Ahern marked him out as the